Home: Somerset, England"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it".Locke's empiricism emphasizes experience of the senses and induction in pursuit of knowledge rather than the use of intuitive or innate ideas or deduction. As Bertrand Russell implies, it was born in opposition to the evils of dogmatic thinking, such as the divine rights of kings, and religious persecution.
-Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sect. 88 (1693)One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance that he proofs it is built upon will warrant. - Locke, (1693)
The only philosophy that affords a theoretical justification of democracy, and that accords with democracy in its temper of mind, is empiricism. Locke, who may be regarded as the founder of empiricism, makes it clear how closely this is connected with his views on liberty and toleration.
- Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, Philosophy and Politics, pg 24.
Rejecting unscientific and unproved dogma, Locke attempted a practical explanation of the human psyche. He regarded the mind at birth as a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which experience imprinted knowledge. Information (ideas) had either Primary qualities (direct physical reality ("real objects")- quantity, shape, motion) or secondary qualities, (Complex, "subjective sensations" that fluctuated or were relative to the particular environment and the particular observer, such as color, sound, temperature). Complex ideas were formed by the unification of simpler ideas, and all ideas were capable of being reduced to their basic components. (Reductionism) Despite appearances, it may not be correct to call Locke a radical empiricist - he felt that the operations of the mind, and the ability to process sensations was in fact innate (Nativism). He also acknowledged subjective reality with the paradox of the basins, (3 basins of hot, warm, cold water, feel different according to the order they are experienced) yet unlike Galileo, he felt that subjective reality could be studied.
An important aspect of Locke's philosophy is the continued insistence of the uncertainty of our knowledge, including his own. This was not universal skepticism, but the spirit of science and tolerance of others opinions. After all, we COULD be wrong, and yet all men are sure. This is also the very spirit of scientific inquiry.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.Social Concerns - The American Ideal: Locke's views, in his Two Treatises of Government (1690), attacked the theory of divine right of kings and the nature of the state as conceived by the Hobbes. Locke argued that sovereignty did not reside in the state but with the people, and that the state is supreme only if it is bound by "natural" law. From Locke's work the following simple argument is unfolded: "If man truly needed a strong government to compel him to do good, what then compels the strong government to act in this manner?" Locke's political ideas were later embodied in the U.S. Constitution; such as the duty to revolution and the belief in religious freedom, separation of church and state and the philosophy that a leader should be held accountable to natural law. These wonderful concepts mark Locke as a grand hero to any American or lover of freedom.
- Dedicatory Epistle to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1690).